Intercompetitor Licensing and Product Innovation

This article explores how intercompetitor licensing between an incumbent and an entrant affects market competition and the entrant’s optimal product quality. In the model, the incumbent has a noncore technology that is used for the noncore attribute of the final product, and the entrant has a new core technology to introduce a new, higher-quality product. For the noncore technology of its product, the entrant can either license it from the incumbent or develop it in-house. The authors show that a royalty licensing contract of the noncore technology between the incumbent and the entrant has a competition-alleviating effect. More important, the effect of such licensing on the entrant’s optimal quality depends on whether its core technology can significantly or only incrementally increase its product quality over the incumbent’s product quality. The royalty contract will tend to increase the entrant’s optimal quality when the entrant’s core technology can offer a significant quality improvement over the incumbent’s. By contrast, if the entrant’s technology can raise its product quality only incrementally over the incumbent’s product quality, the royalty contract will tend to reduce the entrant’s optimal quality. A wide range of royalty licensing contracts are mutually acceptable; the incumbent (entrant) can benefit from such a contract even when the entrant pays a total royalty fee that is lower (higher) than its alternative research-and-development cost. These results hold even when the incumbent endogenously chooses its royalty licensing fee. The main results are robust to several alternative modeling assumptions (e.g., alternative game sequence, endogenous quality decision by the incumbent, alternative licensing contract).

The Effects of Modified Games on the Development of Gross Motor Skill in Preschoolers

<p>Gross motor skills on children must be optimized much earlier since it plays important role not only on their interaction process but also in supporting other multiple developments. One of the means in developing child's motor skill is by providing innovative games i.e. modified games including game format, game timing, and game sequence. The objective of this research was to prove the effects of modified games to the development of gross motor skill of preschoolers. Research method was pre-experimental with One Group Pre-post test Design approach. Research samples were the students of Group B Kindergarten in the districts of Gedeg as many as 180 students which were conducted by using purposive sampling. Research instrument was observation during one month. The data was analyzed by Wilcoxon sign rank test. The results suggested that there was effect of modified games to the development of preschool gross motor skill with p-value = 0.000. Changes on motor skill development were obtained from those who were initially on the beginning stage, as many as 101 respondents, became 14 respondents after intervention. Development stage proceeded as expected, from initial 65 respondents the number increased to 130 respondents. At the end of the intervention, there were even 36 respondents whose development stage beyond where they were supposed to be. This proved that the provision of modified games had positive effects on physical, cognitive, and social development. Modified games triggered children's interest and made them be willing to train their activities as well as muscle development, decreased saturation, and improved their skills in a fun way.</p>

Electronic Gaming and the Ethics of Information Ownership

Players of electronic games, particularly on-line role-playing games, may invest a substantial degree of time, effort, and personal identity into the game scenarios they generate. Yet, where the wishes of players diverge from those of game publishers, the legal and ethical interests of players remain unclear. The most applicable set of legal principles are those of copyright law, which is often grounded in utilitarian justifications, but which may also be justified on deontological grounds. Past copyright cases involving video arcade and personal computer gaming suggest that the gaming scenaria generated by players may constitute original selection and arrangement of the game elements, thus qualifying such gaming sequences for copyright protection as either derivative works or works of joint authorship. But this result may be difficult to justify on utilitarian theories. Rather, the personal investment of game players suggests a deontological basis for claims of game sequence ownership.

Visualizing Changes in Strategy Use across Attempts via State Diagrams: A Case Study

Game log data have great potential to provide actionable information about the in-game behavior of players. However, these low-level behavioral data are notoriously difficult to analyze due to the challenges associated with extracting meaning from sparse data stored at such a small grain size. This paper describes a three-step solution that uses cluster analysis to determine which strategies players use to solve levels in the game, sequence mining to identify changes in strategy across multiple attempts at the same level, and state transition diagrams to visualize the strategy sequences identified by the sequence mining. In the educational video game used in this case study, cluster analysis successfully identified 15 different in-game strategies. The sequence mining found an average of 40 different sequences of strategy use per level, which the state transition diagrams successfully displayed in an interpretable way.

Sequential Effects in Elite Basketball Referees’ Foul Decisions: An Experimental Study on the Concept of Game Management

In a study on penalty decisions in soccer, Plessner and Betsch (2001) refer to a social cognition framework and demonstrate that referees’ initial decisions exert an undesirable impact on later decisions. Mascarenhas, Collins, and Mortimer (2002) criticize this work for an error in the attribution of its findings. In their view, the referees’ efforts to manage games by permanently adjusting decisions to the actual flow of a game have been underestimated. In the present experiment, 113 elite (i.e., first and second league) basketball referees made decisions on videotaped contact situations. These were presented either in their original game sequence or as random successions of individual scenes. Results showed that referees in the condition with the removed sequential context awarded more rigorous sanctions than their colleagues. Findings are interpreted as an instance of empirical evidence for what Mascarenhas et al. (2002) have described as game management. It is argued that the idea of game management should be modeled and further explored within the theoretical concept of social information processing.

Listen and Learn? A Software Review of Earobics®

The evaluation of software in the treatment of a language-learning disability requires analysis of both the technical and conceptual aspects of software development. The Earobics® program is reviewed with this dual purpose. The Earobics® program, as reported by the publisher, is an auditory development and phonics software program that is designed to provide auditory processing and phonemic awareness training. Considered first are the technical aspects of the program, including the program description, hardware requirements, and user friendliness. Next, the conceptual framework motivating the software development is assessed through an analysis of the six games that make up the program. These six games appear to be premised on a combination of auditory processing and phonological awareness principles, which are not necessarily compatible. Finally, the strengths and limitations of the program are examined for the developmental sequence presented in its games and utility of the game sequence in the reading acquisition process.